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Magic Meanings in Mamet's Cryptogram MARTIN SCHAUB My premise is that things do mean things; that there is a way things are irrespective of the way we say things are, and if there isn't, we might as well act as if there were. "And that's how it is on this bitch of an earth,"1 In one of his earlier essays, Marnet recalls what he thinks was a "magic moment" in theatre: "I thought: isn't it the truth: people are born, love, hate, are frightened and happy, grow old and die. We as audience and we as artists must work to bring about a theater, an American Theater, which will be a celebration of these things."2Mamet's dramatic oeuvre, I maintain, is an attempt to live up to these principles. Through the ludic interaction of fictional characters , Marnet celebrates a "truth" lingering in theatrical spaces distorted by violence , suspicion, dishonesty, and deceit. Should I rather heed D.H. Lawrence's slightly shopworn warning and "never trust the artist" here?] Has postmodern theory not obliterated "truth" as an intellectual curiosity long ago? And have we not agreed on the "absence of the transcendental signified," called for an indefinite "play of signification," and affinned "a world of signs ... without truth"4? These canonical tenets of postmodem theory, I again maintain, fall short of describing the scope and import of Mamet's plays. In Mamel's dramatic universe, "things do inean things" - even though, and maybe also because, his characters are constantly denying it. This is especially true for Mamet's recent full-length play The Cryptogram. Here he probes into the rneaning of seemingly small things: a broken teapot, a pilot's knife, a stadium blanket. These things communicate with John, the tenyear -old protagonist of the play, and their meaning will not go away, even while John is constantly being sent to bed. Now, what do things mean in Mamet's The Cryptogram? My attempt at answering this question will start with a consideration of the setting of the play. I will then ponder the presence Modern Drama, 42 (Fall 1999) 326 Magic Meanings in Mamet's Cryptogram 327 and possible purpose of autobiographical bits and pieces in it, and, thirdly, show how a carefully calculated rhetorical and dramatic structure supports John's disquieting initiation into the meaning of things. Finally, I will close this reading of Mamet's The Cryptogram by suggesting theoretical implications . When we entered the auditorium of the Ambassadors Theatre to see the original London production of The Cryptogram in the summer of t994, the stage looked very unlike Mamet. Bob Crowley's set was wonderfully ' 950s: a brown sofa, white empty walls and "a staircase leading up to the second floor,"5 white banisters supporting a dark wooden railing - all cast in the soft, lulling colours of evening and childhood memory· Mamet, the bard of urban restlessness, who has captured in his plays the magic of junk shops, back 'alleys, peep shows, prisons, ships, and offices, sets out to explore the memories and pains hidden in what was once his American living room! Marnet falls back on a prolific dramatic convention: time and again American playwrights have probed into the painful intimacy of the family den to ponder, and purge themselves from, "old sorrow" both their own and humankind 's.' "[A]ny narrative history of modem American drama," remarks Matthew C. Roudano, "reveals the (over)reliance on the primal fa.mily unit usually embittered and embattled within the living room."g Marnel's oeuvre used to be an exception. Until he wrote The Cryptogram, he eschewed the locale. Now, like his famed predecessors, he has finally come forth with a domestic play of his own, and it almost won him another Pulitzer Prize. Marnel knows what his audience will expect, once they see the familiar domestic setting: the characters will be both sheltered and sequestered by the walis of the living room; in the reassuring but agonizing presence of parents and siblings, they will come to a better understanding of themselves, their families, and theirdreams and will acknowledge, in some way, an existential need for each other. The Cryptogram is a...

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